Angela Johnston

Prop 55 has to do with income tax. Specifically, income tax for people who make a lot of money. Four years ago we passed a tax rate increase for people making more than 250,000 dollars a year. That extra money — about 7 billion dollars — has gone to education and health care. The increase is set to expire in 2018--but not if a majority of Californians vote yes on Prop 55.

Last month, four Bay Area residents were named Macarthur Award winners. That means they’re now unofficialy known as "geniuses". Each will receive more than $600,000, and can do with it what they will. That’s usually for the public good. So we all win.

This measure is all about revenue bonds. Bonds are the state’s way of borrowing money for projects that are too big to pay for all at once: big construction projects like dams, highways or bridges. Right now, the state doesn’t need voter approval to sell revenue bonds; they can just sell them to investors, regardless of the amount.

When you exit Highway 101 into East Palo Alto, there’s a construction site you just can’t miss. It’s a big, brick, three-story building with huge glass windows. By early next year this building should be home to a company, and the builders hope it’s a tech startup.

The California drought is now in it’s fifth year, and a recent study says it won’t be over for years to come. The study analyzed California’s mountain snowpack and found that we’d need almost four and a half more years of winter storms to escape drought conditions.

The California ballot will be crowded this November. Last week, the Secretary of State put out a list of the official initiatives –- all 17 of them. We’ll be voting on whether the state should legalize marijuana, lower the cost of pharmaceuticals, repeal the death penalty, require condoms in porn, and countless others. And the large number of measures makes the process a lot more expensive. Here’s why.

San Francisco voters will recognize two familiar names in the state Senate box on their primary ballots. Current City Supervisors Jane Kim and Scott Wiener are both running for District 11 representing San Francisco and northern parts of San Mateo County.

It’s the last week of school at Bessie Carmichael Elementary on 7th and Harrison in the South of Market neighborhood. Photographer Janet Delaney and I are here to see someone we’ve been trying to get in touch with for months -- Bobbie Washington.

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After Internet entrepreneur Tim Hwang created a position for himself as the Deputy Director of the Bay Area Infrastructure Observatory, he began organizing tours of what he calls the "guts of modern life" – the power plants and subway tunnels that keep our cities running.

Ellen Frankel slips the last of her quarters into the Medieval Madness pinball machine and wipes the sweat off her forehead. It’s her second game of the night, and she’s trying to get a new high score. Although she is shy to admit it, Frankel is a real pinball wizard.

Tech jobs are growing faster than colleges can award computer science degrees. A Microsoft report states that in less than ten years, there will be one million available computing jobs in the U.S. How many of those jobs will be filled by women? As of now, not many.

Marine biologist Jon Stern studies cetaceans: porpoises, dolphins and whales. Stern is a professor at San Francisco State and also leads field studies on the Northern California coast for the non-profit Golden Gate Cetacean Research. So he’s gotten up close and personal with his fair share of dead whales.

Henry Evans and his wife Jane live high up in the Los Altos foothills. To get there you have to drive up twisting roads with steep switchback turns. On a Thursday morning 12 years ago Henry drove up these same roads after dropping his children off at school.

At the Livermore Veteran’s Hospital, there are a few animals residents can see: wild turkeys that run around the grounds, rattlesnakes that hide out in the dry grass, and therapy dogs that make weekly visits. But there’s one animal in particular that Bryce Lee is always happy to see: a baby harp seal.

According to a 2013 study, one in six people who work in Silicon Valley spend at least two hours on their commute. Nuemi Guzman is one of those people. She’s a legal assistant with the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley.

When you walk inside the Buena Vista Mobile Home Park, you can tell right away that this is home for over 400 people. They’ve painted their units bright colors. There are traditional mobile homes that look like small rectangular bungalows – but there are also little cottages, Airstream trailers, and RVs. Kids zigzag between the park’s six streets on their bikes.

“I was 11 when we moved here with my parents. I practically grew up here,” says Erika Escalante.

Callie Jones is showing me how to 3-D print a tiny yellow chess piece, after designing it herself on a computer. It’s her second day in the 3-D printing club and she’s already a pro.

“So the printer’s like putting little dots on top of little dots on top of little dots, and so when the dots hit each other, they start to dry, and so it just starts to build up and up and up until you make the figure that it’s printing,” she explains.